Archive for September 2014

Pres. George W. Bush waded into a scuffle between security forces in Chile to rescue one of his Secret Service agents who had been stopped. The Chilean press panned the move, which was the culmination of ongoing disagreements over security at the APEC forum, but W looked pleased with himself, as he should have been. Can you imagine His Oneness even noticing, much less doing anything about it himself? I can not.

Kevin Williamson absolutely destroys the Lena Dunham view of voting as therapeutic, rather than emblematic of citizenship. He is taking heat for this — rather unattractive actresses who are militantly progressive must be protected, of course — but he is right.

Progressives are already howling about Walmart’s plan to offer no-cost or low-cost checking accounts. Does Walmart hope these people will become their loyal customers? Of course it does. Will this plan help some of the millions who currently lack affordable access to the banking system? Of course it will. But instead of being pilloried as the great commercial Satan, Walmart should be praised for devising a plan which helps individuals while benefiting itself.

Walmart manages to keep its stores stocked with goods people want and can afford, and is so often on the scene of natural disasters within hours of the events. I have every confidence it can figure out how to run a part of a banking system.

Well, it’s not actually a cloak a la a Harry Potter novel, but a series of lenses which do offer three-dimensional cloaking without distortion. It’s pretty damned cool, isn’t it? Even better, they offer DIY instructions on a model which can be built for less than $100.

UPDATE: Since YAHOO pieces sometimes evaporate into the ether without notice, here’s the story from The Daily Mail, which may have been the original piece anyway.

Fifty years on, the assassination of John F. Kennedy still stirs controversy, as author Philip Shenon points out. Even someone who served as a staffer on the Warren Commission has developed doubts on the commission’s conclusions.

The D.C.-based Assassinations Archive and Research Center has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the National Archives and Records Administration, and is holding a conference on the assassination.

What do I think? Well, the mob had motive to kill Bobby Kennedy, who has happily accepted their help on certain things and then broke his word that he wouldn’t come after them. But the mob had plenty of competent killers in its ranks. Why would it use a sad sack like Oswald? Fidel Castro certainly had no fondness for the Kennedy family, and I suppose he could have offered asylum to Oswald in exchange for killing Kennedy, calculating it would cost Cuba nothing. Bottom line is that I don’t know, but I surely would like to see all those papers NARA is refusing to release. Wouldn’t you? I think I’ll have to settle for reading Jerome Corsi’s new book, “Who Really Killed Kennedy?”

UPDATE: Some news from the Assassinations Archive and Research Center conference.